RS

MEMBER DIARY

Obama-Shreds Constitution, Roberts Burns It Up-Fair Reading Of The Dissent

Just finished reading the dissent of the Obamacare decision. The dissent eviscerates the majority opinion and is solid as a rock. OBAMA HAS BEEN SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION, ROBERTS JUST BURNED IT UP from what I read from the dissent. 1. Mandate is not a tax, but is a tax – hallucinogenic. 2. WHAT THE STATES CONSIDERED A WIN (CAN KEEP MEDICAID FUNDS) IS REALLY ANOTHER LOSS OF LIBERTY PER THE DISSENTERS! Effectively creates heavier tax burdens on states that do not participate in Obamacare (and individuals of those states) because they will be subsidizing the other states that do participate.

FROM THE DISSENT: “The Court’s disposition, invented and atextual as it is,does not even have the merit of avoiding constitutional difficulties. It creates them. The holding that the Individual Mandate is a tax raises a difficult constitutional question (what is a direct tax?) that the Court resolves with inadequate deliberation.

And the judgment on the Medicaid Expansion issue ushers in new federalism concerns and places an unaccustomed strain upon the Union.Those States that decline the Medicaid Expansion must subsidize, by the federal tax dollars taken from their citizens, vast grants to the States that accept the Medicaid Expansion. If that destabilizing political dynamic, so antagonistic to a harmonious Union, is to be introduced at all, it should be by Congress, not by the Judiciary.

The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court’s ruling undermines those values at every turn. In the name of restraint, it overreaches. In the name of constitutional avoidance, it creates new constitutional questions. In the name of cooperative federalism, it undermines state sovereignty.

The Constitution, though it dates from the founding of the Republic, has powerful meaning and vital relevance to our own times. The constitutional protections that this case involves are protections of structure. Structural protections—notably, the restraints imposed by federalism and separation of powers—are less romantic and have less obvious a connection to personal freedom than the provisions of the Bill of Rights or the Civil War Amendments. Hence they tend to be undervalued or even forgotten by our citizens. It should be the responsibility of the Court to teach otherwise, to remind our people that the Framers considered structural protections of freedom the most important ones, for which reason they alone were embodied in the original Constitution and not left to later amendment. The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today’sdecision should have vindicated, should have taught, thistruth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.

For the reasons here stated, we would find the Act invalid in its entirety. We respectfully dissent.”